Chinese women born after 1990 have on average a higher education level than their husbands, a dramatic reversal compared with previous generations, a new study has found.

The research also found that the shift in couples’ relative education levels has impacted family planning decisions, with women who are more educated than their spouse being statistically less likely to have more than one child.

The paper by Qing Shisong, director of East China Normal University’s Population Research Institute, was originally published in February but went viral on Chinese social media last week after domestic media outlet The Paper reported its findings.

Qing’s project analyzed detailed data on over 12,000 married couples born between 1950 and 1994 taken from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), an annual national survey of Chinese households conducted by Peking University.

The data revealed that the proportion of women marrying men with a lower educational background has steadily risen in recent decades, while the proportion of those marrying men with higher education levels has been falling.

Among the oldest cohort, born between 1950 and 1954, only 6.9% of women “married down” in educational terms. But among the youngest cohort, born between 1990 and 1994, more than one-quarter did so.

Significantly, the youngest cohort is the first generation in which women are more likely to have a higher education level than their spouse, according to the study.

Qing attributed the trend to the growing number of Chinese women gaining a higher education. Since 2009, women have outnumbered men in both undergraduate and postgraduate programs at Chinese universities — a reversal of the gender education gap that has also taken place in several Western countries.

However, Qing cautioned that it’s unclear to what extent the change in Chinese couples’ relative education levels translates into a shift in their relative income levels. Further research is needed on this question, he said.

But the data indicates that the trend has had a clear impact on couples’ decision-making, including their willingness to have children.

Women who are more educated than their husbands are statistically less likely to have more than one child, the study found. What’s more, the larger the education gap, the less likely they were to have two or more kids.

“In marriages where the wife has higher education, women seem to have greater bargaining power in fertility decisions,” the study noted, adding that this could be due to women feeling “their rights are still insufficiently protected under traditional gender roles, such as having to shoulder most of the responsibilities for household and child care.”

This finding in particular has sparked significant discussion on the microblogging platform Weibo, with a related hashtag receiving over 23 million views.

“Highly educated women tend to prioritize their careers and personal fulfillment,” read one comment with over 1,400 likes. “Our lives are about more than just marriage and children,” another user remarked.

China has been placing an ever greater focus on encouraging young people to get married and have children in recent years, as the government becomes increasingly concerned about the country’s rapidly aging population. 

Authorities have gradually relaxed the “one-child policy” — with couples now allowed to have up to three children — and even introduced a slew of incentives to push couples to have more kids. 

But the study’s findings suggest that the most effective method for encouraging women to have children may be by promoting social change, rather than offering economic incentives.

According to the paper, the gradual reduction of inequality in household gender roles in China over recent decades has had a noticeable impact on couples’ family planning decisions.

For women born after 1970, there appears to be little difference in fertility intentions between those who “married up” in educational terms and those who “married down.”

However, Qing’s paper also makes clear that the struggle for gender equality in China still has a long way to go.

According to the latest data from the CFPS, wives continue to shoulder far more domestic labor than their husbands, especially when it comes to tasks such as dropping children off at kindergarten and helping with homework.

Some policies inadvertently reinforce women’s traditional role as the family’s primary caregiver, such as the fact that women receive far more parental leave than men, the study points out.

“To achieve optimal fertility levels, it is essential to actively promote equal gender division of labor and provide strong institutional support,” Qing wrote.

“This includes fostering a new culture around marriage and childbearing, encouraging both spouses to share parenting responsibilities, and implementing policies that reduce the burden of childrearing at the family level,” he added.

Several Chinese regions have reported slight increases in their birth rates this year, though demographers caution that the number of births is likely to continue falling over the long term.

(Header image: A group wedding at Beijing Institute of Technology in Beijing, June 16, 2019. VCG)